Recap: 'Fringe' - 'Brave New World, Part One'

I’m not going to go into a tremendous amount of speculation about tonight’s “Fringe,” since the first hour of two-part finales are tricky ones to really analyze. Everything truly important will go down next week, with this installment serving primarily as set-up for the major shakeups coming down the pipe in the season (not series) finale seven days hence. My biggest instant reaction to the first part of “Brave New World”? I want that second hour NOW. Not because I need answers this second, although that wouldn’t be awful. Rather, this felt like an unbalanced installment of the series, one that was holding its cards back for future play rather than creating a satisfying hour unto itself.

What’s most remarkable at this stage of the game is just how much the show doesn’t even bother noting how weird it is that we’re still in a reality that changed at the end of the third season. Whereas the first half of the season teased out Peter’s absence and re-integration, “Fringe” really has stopped concerning itself with bothering to explain why it felt the need to take such drastic narrative steps. Now, I’m not saying the show HAS to do this. But it’s weird all the same that, outside of Olivia and Peter, it’s given up on trying to create emotional links between the first three seasons of this show. There’s chockfull of continuity on the story side of things. After all, the realities this season wouldn’t be possible without the events that played out in the first three. But rather than continually and overtly comment on the differences between then and now, it simply saunters forth.

All of this leads to the return of William Bell, who died both corporeally (Season 2) and spiritually (Season 3) in the other reality. Now, am I gonna hate on Spock returning to TV? Heck no. All hail Leonard Nimoy. And look, either you love the fact that “Fringe” altered the rules in order to facilitate another appearance from the geek god himself, or you wonder if stakes really matter in a show that can simply shift realities in order to serve its own needs. The problem with genre fiction is that while it can explore topics in ways normal fiction can’t, its fantastical elements can lead to some shortcuts that, if misapplied, can undo the hard work it’s trying to accomplish. Introducing the concept of different universes could have been a disaster, and yet worked like gangbusters. But the introduction of a new reality is, to use imagery the show would approve, has been a bridge too far.

Then again, it’s only a bridge too far for those interested in characters, not character types. I can see the appeal of looking at the same person (let’s call him “Walter Bishop”, for funsies) in multiple scenarios to analyze humans from a nature/nurture perspective. “Fringe” has certainly been preoccupied with the question of what truly makes a person this season, and it’s a fine question. But it’s also often an academic one, especially when it relates to long-form televised narrative. Something like “Run Lola Run” works because it’s a 90-minute meditation on fate, choice, will, and the branching paths a person can take through their interactions and applications of those criteria. But it’s one thing to watch that play out over an hour and a half. It’s quite another to see that play out over four seasons.

There’s always a schism between those that watch genre fiction for the ideas versus those that watch them for the characters. Such a binary is inherently limited, and clearly most people don’t watch solely for one versus the other. Those in it primarily for the ideas of this show have loved this season, by and large, and that’s great. I don’t dismiss those views, and don’t look down upon them in the slightest. Personally speaking, I want to watch people I care about (or at least can empathize with) engaged in fantastical scenarios that force them to make choices that reflect something interesting about human nature. The extent to which I can view these people as the characters I’ve invested several years in has varied all season long. And even if we have our primary players back, it’s still unclear to what extent they have actually returned at all.

Case in point: While we know have Original Recipe Olivia back (in terms of her memory), that model exists inside the physiology of someone experimented on by a different Walter and a different William Bell. So what constitutes the “real” Olivia? The nature of identity itself is a fundamental tenet of genre fiction. (What makes us human? Where does technology end and consciousness begin?) It’s an interesting concept, but one that’s often dramatically inert.

Adding to the problems of tonight’s episode is the fact that “Letters of Transit” has contextualized events that should be surprising in ways that feel themselves academic. Had we not seen William Bell encased in amber two weeks ago, would his reveal tonight have been more dramatic? Absolutely! (Also helping matters? Had the show not run Nimoy’s name during the opening credits. There are SAG rules around such appearances, and thus this isn’t the network’s fault. But MY GOD.) But more problematic than telegraphing his appearance, “Transit” has telegraphed certain beats that have to happen in order to make that episode make sense. Astrid getting shot at the end of tonight’s episode should have floored me, rebooted universe or not. Instead? I’m pretty sure she’s OK, since she’s in amber a few decades from now.

I haven’t talked much about the mechanics of tonight’s episode, since they were fairly simple. In essence, the entire hour is a long con in order to separate Peter and Olivia from Walter on behalf of William Bell. Bell wanted to lure Walter out via the specific form of nanites embedded in the device used to melt people from the inside out, and sacrificed his greatest acolyte (David Robert Jones) via a complicated plot lifted from the film “Batman and Robin.” (Akiva Goldsman, producer of “Fringe” and co-writer on the finale, also wrote “Batman and Robin.” Just saying.) The idea of Boston burning to the ground was potent, but it was also just a ruse in order to lure Walter to a warehouse which now houses the transformed humans from “Nothing As It Seems.”

Why did any of this happen? Again: We won’t know until next week. But we “know” a few things. We know that Rebecca Mader’s character will probably be back. Putting aside the fact that she’s enough of a star to warrant more screen time than afforded her this hour, nurse Jessica Holt’s character all but had “I’m A Mole” written across her shirt during her time onscreen. What else do we know? That all the sudden baby talk between Peter and Olivia will come to a head next week, either to provide fans of that pair a summer’s worth of hair pulling or to help explain future Henrietta’s existence. What else do we know? That mentions of Bell’s cruelty in “Transit” will probably play out next week, and will probably involve a certain bullet already seen around Henrietta’s neck, and it may or may not involve Olivia’s rapid transition into full-blown Jean Grey. (I know nothing at all about next week, but I’m guessing any bullet that hits her will be one intended for someone else that she mentally redirects in an act of sacrifice.)

So we’re already looking to the future, on both a micro- and macro level. But I still can’t shake the feeling that the failings of “Fringe” this year have been its inability to leverage its past. It can’t leverage it because it actively severed it, not unlike the way it severed the bridge’s connection to the other universe last week. The latter was an act of narrative necessity, one that temporarily solved a problem but also left them more vulnerable and alone. But it’s one that would have been infinitely more powerful had it happened with the same characters we grew to love. Fauxlivia was just as real to me as Olivia before Peter disappeared. I could accept that since the realities for both characters were as real to us as to them, and therefore put all parties onscreen on the same level as those off. But the disconnect this year has been so profound for so long that certain moments work in spite of themselves at this point, not because they were truly earned.

At one point tonight, Walter looks over the scribblings he etched into the tables in St. Claire’s. He puts his fingers over them, remembering the time he spent in there. But we never spent a second in there. His time in St. Claire’s was spent with the incorrect assumption that his son had died. All of his recollections are based in the timeline established after Peter’s disappearance. That scene works because John Noble is pretty much a god, not because our connection with Walter is so strong. And “Fringe” has absolutely no idea there’s a difference at this point. Those etchings are supposedly permanent. But they are in fact transitory. There are an infinite amount of etches that Walter makes in an infinite number of realities. That writing has changed, no matter how much the show tries to sell us that they haven’t. That’s been the show’s problem all season long. And it looks like a problem that will carry through into its final year.

Where do you stand on this season as a whole at this point? Did “Letters of Transit” augment or hurt your love of the currently unfolding events? Any bold predictions for the finale? Sound off below!

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Excellent, well thought out recap of not just the Episode, but of Fringe S4 v Fringe S1-3. If you remember, William Bell was named as the titular head of ZFT in season 1, but that was a different set of 'Verses. Also, Jones was on his way to do very bad things to Belly in the season finale of S1. But what if he was heading to "The Red 'Verse" to hook up with Belly so they could 69 a life of crime together? And bust up some "universi." But then why would Belly suck Olivia all the way over to "help" her, unless he knew she would fail to find Newton, as Nina didn't have a clue regarding the symbol on Newton's Head. But when ya think of it, maybe Olivia wasn't sucked into "The Red 'Verse" that time - Maybe she was sucked into THIS version of "The Other Side" and that was "bad-guy-Belly" she had originally Met with? But... he refers to dragging her across universi in S2E23. Anyway - Olivia: Jean Grey - Now THAT never occuired to me hahaha!

This episode seems to be the writers realizing that they did nothing with Olivia since midseason 3, except for the lame crowbar and the test.
So all of the sudden she is all power, I would have loved a couple of episodes to get there.

Love the scene where Olivia hepls to cool down.
The most difficult task seems to show these powers without actuaaly showing them, only the intensity in which they are used.

Not sure if I like the return of Bell, takes away from everything else, and confirms that this was written as a series finale, in a different timeline.
Bell was working with Walter, they were buddys in 2.22 and when he used Olivia in 3.17 and 3.19, Walter did care more for Bell.
So whatever Bell wants from Olivia, could have been done there, no need to use Jones to activate her, even if it was only 1 test.

I always thought either Bell or Jones is Olivias father, never even mentioned in 4 seasons.
It looks like it will be Bell, and will we learn about the uncle and the kayak, and why Olivia is important, after 4 seasons, far too late.

So Olivia is the Dame and Bell the King??

Once again all the writing goes to Walter, easy going for John Noble, you cannot miss with all those oneliners, the smelling, the big scenes.

See what Anna Torv has to do with :
in the scene between Nina and Walter, Olivia is very much there, intensely listening, as with all her other scenes, that for me is brilliant acting.

But Walter and Olivia is as in daily life:
the extravert, attention seeking gets the credit,
the quit, introvert subtle hardworking gets overlooked and is underrated.

Great observations in the recap. Love the Jean Gray comparison to Olivia's rapidly evolving abilities, as well as the callback to Akiva Goldman's recycled "Batman & Robin" plot device. I appreciate your effort to still be committed to the show's storytelling despite its blatant and continual bypass of unresolved reboot issues.

I will always love FRINGE--the good, the bad and the ugly-Season-4-cutting-off-its-nose-to-spite-its-face storytelling. I'll always be invested in "our" main 6 characters (Walter, Peter, Olivia, Astrid, Broyles, Nina), in any incarnation. Here are my thoughts on the season after this episode:

In this NEW timeline, *over there* William Bell never died/is BAD; *over here* William Bell died in a car accident/was GOOD. His destiny in each universe SWITCHED in the reboot. *Over There* William Bell has been Season 4's "big bad" since the premiere. Yes--due to "Letters of Transit" and the beginning on-screen credit, Leonard Nimoy's appearance was only mildly surprising; and my concern for Astrid is next to nil. All that *fringe* baking over the last 4-years between Walter and Astrid (in ALL timelines) will ironically be the element in the show that saves her life. The writers are quite cheeky.

Also, I think David Robert Jones' new death facilitated (again) through the (rock 'em, sock 'em) hand of Peter (via Olivia) and a nefarious *fringe* science creation is a *course-correction* delight...any way you slice it (pun intended).

One more thing....sometimes on "Sex and the City", when Mr. Big (Chris Noth) would make an unexpected appearance, they wouldn't show his name until the END credits. This happened maybe once out of all of his guest-appearances on the series but I cannot for the life of me (why would I?) remember the episode. My point is that unless the rules have changed since then, SAG made the exception for that episode.

Hi Ryan, I've never commented here before, and this is going to sound like a backhanded compliment, but I like your reviews, in spite of the fact that they often annoy me and that I mostly disagree with your takes. I respect your passion for the show, I've arrived at the conclusion we just view it differently.

You view the Walter, Olivia, Astrid, et al. of Seasons 1-3 as gone, and while I obviously understand what you mean, that's never how I've seen it. "Our" Olivia or Walter or whomever isn't gone, they just ARE the person they've become now as a by-product of Peter's decision to use The Machine. People critical of that storytelling decision obviously view it as lazy or a cheat, but as you said, this is genre fiction, in particular genre fiction centered around aberrations in the laws of physics, so I've always been willing to allow the producers leeway under that operating principle. I can't even fault the way they sold it. Coming into this year, they said it was going to be "the season of Peter", and it's been exactly that, not necessarily in terms of screen time or story beats, but in terms of this is the year the storytelling shifted from arguably a 3-perspective narrative (Olivia, Peter, Walter in my opinion, though degrees are debatable) to an undeniably 1-person narrative. The show, at least in terms of the whole body of work, is now visible through Peter's eyes only, and I don't have a problem with that. If everyone'e minds, including Peter, had been, reset, so to speak, that I would've had a major problem with and would've been more amenable to critical claims that the show is cheating or negating the audience's investment or selling out its characters. The characters that you (and others) "miss" are still there narratively, but only through Peter's existence and recollection, and I think if you're waiting for them to "come back", that wait's probably going to be in vain and in the meantime a pretty compelling story is moving forward.

That's actually something I greatly respect about this show, is it doesn't look back or reset to the status quo, it constantly drives forward (though I concede a cynical person might argue that this whole season could've just been designed to give the show a do-over with its most compelling villains). You raise the example of a lack of connection with the present Walter's time in St. Claire's because it was based on the (now faulty) assumption his son had died. That pain is very real to him though, and I feel like the connection to the Walter of Seasons 1-3 that you're not feeling still exists because in the original scenario he spent his time in St. Claire's with the pain of a living son who essentially treated HIM as if HE were dead. I just view that as the show taking 2 different routes to arrive at equal pain, and I have no quarrel with it. I don't experience a lack of investment because for me, as long as there's a character within the show that is aware of the whole scope of the story, then I don't view the original Olivia and Walter as distinct from the current ones. They are characters that lived lives, had elements of those lives erased due to the in-story decisions and actions of another character, and are now living lives dealing with, to varying degrees, the re-integration of said other character.

On the whole, I've really liked this season and the things they've done creatively. It took a little getting used to in the beginning that the paradigm of the show had shifted to being told wholly from Peter's perspective, but once I adjusted to that, it's been great. I enjoyed the look into the future as I enjoy non-linear storytelling. I agree with you that it took a lot of the dramatic edge off of the William Bell reveal and possibly off of whatever Astrid's fate is going to be, but again, as a fan of non-linear stories, I've learned to enjoy inverse proportions of drama and mystery, and I'll accept some of my drama being undercut if it allows me some unanswered questions and a mystery to unravel, and so far this stretch run of episodes is delivering that for me. Thanks for the forum to talk about the show, have a good one.

You explained it so well, I'm not as at ease with the changes as you are, but the fact that Peter remains the same is my connecting door to the first 3 seasons. When Walter comes out of that room, all lost and nervous, he moves towards Peter as a lifeline, and Peter puts his arm around him, knowing what he means to Walter, in this incarnation as in the other.

Since when is it ok to take control over a person like that? Everyone is all Olivia is so badass! I love Olivia! but i recall Tyler from season 2 using mind control to control Peter and everyone didn't like him. And Im sure if it had been Peter tapping into Olivia's ability and had her kick jones butt, people will scream sexism right off the bat. It's insulting that women can control men but men are the ones who are sexist.

Right cause heaven forbid that a 6'2 33 year old guy can't take care himself and FIGHT back, he actually needs a damn woman to do the work for him. Granted I am a woman myself but I HATE the hypocrisy when it comes to female leads who become superheroes. They bitch when Peter uses his abilities and save the day and to help Olivia but they act like Olivia is a god for using hers and using it to 'save' Peter.

Didn't peter just suffer a traumatic head injury? IMHO Peter was dazed and in pain. Olivia had a clear head and didn't feel Peter's pain so she was about to pop his arm back in its socket and punch DRJ.

The new timeline really bugs me when I try to remember what has happened in this timeline versus in the original. A normal history in this kind of show is difficult enough, trying to separate a faded memory of something that happened 2 years ago against the remade timeline's version is just a pain in the ass and has taken me out of the drama at least once an episode this year. When I thought this might last a couple episodes there was fun in playing Where's Waldo with the differences, but now I just want them to dump any references to the new timeline's past and just start as fresh as possible with new conflicts. Which is a sad thing to hope for this late into the series, but there it is.

Your review is pretty much spot-on, Ryan. Leaving aside my problems with the new timeline, this episode should have carried lots of emotional weight: William Bell's return as the true baddie, Astrid being shot or even the threat of Olivia's death. We know Astrid will be okay, Olivia will live for at least 5 years longer and that William Bell's death was a ruse. Letters of Transit might have been one of the best of the season, but it's hurting the impact of the current developments. A truly suspenseful cliffhanger can't be about Peter's, Walter's, Astrid's, Olivia's, Broyles's or Nina's safety. Unlike last season, the stakes are not really high.

It was nice to see Olivia's powers at work, but I had to laugh at her, when she said: "I just want it out" [her power]. Don't be ridiculous, Olivia! That's the only interesting thing about you!

Ryan-agree with you that by switching the timelines we lost something that will never be returned. I miss that Walter and Peter lived in that old house for instance, and scenes like when Olivia comes downstairs and Walter is cooking breakfast for them all, naked.

For all the heart centered themes of this show, the showrunners chose cleverness over heart, variations on a theme instead of the people we'd come to love. Only Peter is the same, and its rather odd that he has all these memories that Walter and Astrid don't share, and Olivia now remembers, but didn't live them in this reality.

And it sounds ***spoiler alert*** from the previews that they are going to move things again for next season, Sigh. But I'll watch, as I love this show even in its IMO weakened state.

Have to say, although I wasn't surprised by Bell's appearance at the end, Nimoy saying "Hello, Old Friend" was absolutely fabulous. My inner Trekkie loved it. BTW, I didn't interpret the sacrifice of Jones to get Walter alone, more I thought it had to do with the continued activation of Olivia's powers, as it was her intervention that allowed Peter to get the upper hand.

Exactly right, Ryan. And it's such a pity after the spectacular season 3. Now it feels like it just comes down to riding out the final 14 episodes with characters who are familiar to - but not the same as - the ones we grew to care so much about.

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Bellivia or Oliviam (or however you refer it), comes back next week during episode 22 or the finale.

Think of Bellivia as a Darth Vader, for she has the "force". And he/she may be controlling mankind in 2036 (or play a big role).

The cortexiphan trials was to find a proper suitor for William Bell.

Olivia will die in a spiritual sense.

William Bell and the Observers have been collaborating all along.

This "new" timeline was to ensure that William Bell is alive and kicking for when all of this unfolds; the last timeline failed because he died in a physical and spiritual sense. After all, there's more than one of everything, right?

The mysterious man in "X" in Olivia's cartoonish dream WAS in fact William Bell or an agent of William Bell, or what have you. He tries to kill her but he failed.

"Jones isn't smart enough to do this," says Walter as he looks at the nanodendrites, or whatever. WHAT???? DRJ can do ANYTHING! And in ONE episode we're suddenly supposed to be this Superbaddy as just a tool of someone else? I don't buy it. That's not just bad character development; that's shoddy plotting.